Rell's Door panel build

[Rell]

I posted this on a few other sites I'm on, so I figured why not here too.

**NOTE** This will not be my first time glassing but this will be my first real big project. Also first time wood working so bare with me. I'm just kinda winging it as I go along.

The car

1988 Chevy Caprice LS Brougham

The plan

-Relocate door handles, maybe something from a different car or after market

-(2) 10in Selenium speakers in the front bottom portion of the front doors (1 speaker per front door)

-(8 to 10) 8in Selenium speakers, (2) following behind the 10in in the front doors and (2) per rear door

-Maybe (2) 8's for the kick panels, still not sure if I want to remove the e-brake

-(4-6) Audiopipe 1in bullet tweeters, undecided on the total amount to run right now.

-Doors will be wrapped, not painted. Will probably have a few custom accent pieces made for the doors so I can add paint to them.

Stock doors, Clean as is just like the rest of the interior but I want to try something different.

Starting off with 1/4in sheet of MDF, top metal part of the original door panel is mounted to the wood with screws, I think I will be removing the screws later and popping rivits through the metal and into the wood in place of the screws, or maybe use both.

The speakers- Selenium 10in, 8in, and 6in all with the 2piece grills from parts express. Will not be using the 6in those are going into the MC SS (another build later)

Hung the base of the doors to see how it fits, and it fits pretty damn good if you ask me.

Have to fill in the little gap with fiberglass resin and chop mat and sand to perfection.

With the doors close, got to check how close the wood came into contact with the interior trim of the car. Always make sure your doors close. Can't build up some door panels and then you go to mount them on and can't even close them lol.

Comes very close with the B pillar interior trim. Door still closes perfectly but I have an Idea to fix that.

Make sure there is clearance for the dash area too, I lightly marked with pencil where I will have to make clearance for the dash (aka a area where I cant build up to high, other wise I wont be shutting these doors)

Speaker rings, get out your

-plunge router

-1/4in straight cut (down or up spiral) bit..buy a bit that has a flute length of 3/4in or 1in so that when you make your final cuts you can cut all the way through your 3/4in MDF

-Jasper jig

-Drill bits

-Drill

I'm using speaker grills, so really the only measurements I needed was the cut out diameter of the speaker its self, and the over all diameter of the speaker grill.

Just to give me a visual and to find my pivot/center point take the diameter for speaker cut out and over all diameter of the speaker ring and simply divide that in half. You now have your pivot/center point.

Figured I would bust out this little cheap Digital caliper I got off Amazon.com for like 10 bucks shipped a while back, and put it to work.

Measure it out and mark it onto cardboard or whatever, I used a piece of scrap 1/4in MDF. 1 point for the pencil/pen whatever you want to use and one end drill a hole for pivot point.

[Rell]

Starting out with 3/4in mdf

Setting the cutting depth

have the bit set into your router, plunge the router all the way down till the bit touched the surface of the wood you are cutting, then lock the router in place.

Loosen the depth setting rod, I want the grill to be flushed into the doors so place your grill under the depth setting rod and push it down onto the top of the grill and tighten the depth setting rod so that its stays in place.

Remove the grill

Now when you start your router and plunge it down into the wood for your first cut the rod will go down with the router and stop it to cut the depth/height of the speaker grill.

First pass.

Second pass, vacuum that shit up after.

Few more passes later and speaker grill in to see how it looks.

Setting depth cut for the last two cuts with the router, Outter diameter first. Remember like Steve says leave about a 1in or so left. DON'T cut a complete circle. Other wise you will lose your pivot point for the jasper jig and won't be able to cut out the middle.

I cut out a little small piece of the 3/4in mdf to easily set my cutting depth. Do the same as you did for the grills.

Place it on there and drop the depth rod down and tighten up.

Remove it and your ready to cut.

[Rell]

With 10in sitting in the ring.

With grill

Good fit IF I was painting my doors, but I want to wrap them. So I did not compensate for the thickness of the leather/suede whichever I use. So I need to make the rings a little wider. Will re-do them later.

Made sure I did it right though for the 8's. 6 rings down 2-4 more to go.

Laid out onto the door base for a visual. Looks about right...peep my crayon coloring game though ahaha.

Floral foam- From dollar tree store. Apparently fiberglass resin does not melt this stuff so I will be using this VS. "great stuff" foam in a can which fiberglass resin WILL melt.

Using it to shape up the upper portion of the doors. I'll explain more later and with pics when I get to that part.

Cant just use these big ass bricks so gotta cut them down. Add more and glue them to each other if you need to build it up higher.

[Rell]

Audiopipe bullet tweeter came in today, only ordered one for mock up purposes and cause I'm not sure how many I want to use yet still.

A MS paint sketch up on how I will mount them (reverse mount)

The tweeter.

[Rell]

The screws that came with the tweeter are garbage, I straight stripped them POS when putting them in with hand screw driver. Now I need to go back to the store and get some better replacements.

Nothing final, just some practice on how I want to mount the tweeter. Will work out the kinks later.

Picked up a lil hole saw set.

And some hardware, they didn't really have what I wanted so I just grabbed this. Think Ima switch up to something else later.

3/4 to the far left, and 1/4in to the far right. Got out the router and cut out 3.5in circles. Then used 1 3/4in hole saw to cut out the middle.

Tweeter in the 3/4 ring, the tweeter will be permanently screwed to this ring.

With the 1/4in mdf ring on there. This ring will be glued down with the rest of the flushed rings for the speaker. Fabric stretched over and glassed.

3/8in foster bit. Drilled in just enough to make the screw head sit flush with the wood.

Screws in

When I'm ready these screws will be set in here permanently.

Remember this 3/4in ring is meant to stay screwed down into the tweeter always. Prob never remove it unless I need to replace the actual tweeter.

How it will all look, not pushed together all the way though. Toss a washer and nut on the back there and now I can reverse mount these without having to front mount and see the screw heads exposed on the front of the door panels.

That's it for now, Idk when next update will be. Went a little Christmas shopping yesterday and I feel a little sick spending so much damn money. lol all for the kids though.

Comes very close with the B pillar interior trim. Door still closes perfectly but I have an Idea to fix that.

^^^^

Taking on that little issue next. Which will require another full sheet of MDF for what I have in mind. Updates when I get stuff moving again.

[Rell]

Black and Decker FTMFL. lol I couldn't pass it up for $20 at walmart though. Well not so much the jigsaw but some how my blades for it got bent. Making tryna cut straight lines or curve areas for that matter a bitch to cut.

This is a POS!!

Horrible cuts, but the front doors use to look a little like this too around the edges just not as bad, but they look good now with a little work put into them.

But ima get it in.

Scrap piece of wood with some sand paper glued to it for a long block... plus my Dremel.

Sand that down, not liking it. I'll finish it off better tomorrow.

[Rell]

little update nothing exciting just some sanding, had to clean up the border of the door panels. Tossed both on top of each other, IDK where the hell all my clamps went to..prob outside in the shed. So I put some weights to make sure the wood didn't slide around while I was sanding and tryna bring them both to the same level.

I also did the same for the front doors too since they weren't exactly the same, but now they are.

Sanding all that shit by hand/with my sand paper glued to scrap piece of wood, also needed some new respirator filters went to get some but they were sold out. So had to rock with a little fan to blow the MDF dust outta my face. USE A RESPIRATOR PEOPLE, BREATHING IN MDF DUST IS NO JOKE! SAFETY FIRST!

Used to look real rough around the edges

All doors cut out, getting ready to frame everything out, then possibly wrapping with some fabric and some glassing.

Picked up some more MDF today 1/2in to frame out the rest of these doors. More to come, still gotta redo the rings for the 10's too and make about 2-4 more 8in rings.(still thinking about removing my e-brake)

Stay tuned.

[Rell]

Working on these back door.

Tape it up

Flip it over, trim the edges

Ready to go

lil something I made to help me figure out this trim piece I'm about to make..What will hopefully give me a nice little bit of clearance around the doors.

Sharpie in, hold the sharpie and the pencil thats sticking through the wood and work your way around the doors.

[Rell]

Added another hole into it, now there is a 1/2in gap between each line. In between these two lines there will be a cut out piece of 1/2in mdf.

Little visual layout

Cut out the marked area, and taped to a piece of 1/2in mdf

Traced around the edges

Rough cut out. Why? because I didn't cut out the tape to perfection. So I will sand and make it to perfection with some sanding.

After some time sanding (STILL NEED SOME MORE WORK). When I get the shape I need from it I will flip it over onto another piece of mdf and cut it out to perfection for the other rear door.

[Rell]

I really needed a router table. Didn't put too much craftsman ship into it. But its sturdy and functional so that's all that matters to me. Just needed something quick and temporary.

Anyways just these two pics, I built it in what felt like 15mins so I didn't stop to take pics every 30 seconds.

2x4's for top and legs, with 3/4in mdf glued and drilled to the top, then 1/4in mdf glued and drilled to that. With 1/4in base screwed into the router.